I’m pretty excited about it. The only thing that sucks is that I have to move. Moving is never fun. Never. Ever. It is only moderately awesome when you know that in less than 50 days you will finally be living with the love of your life. That is it. That is the only time moving is kind of awesome.

I don’t know what it is about moving, but moving always reminds me that I have way too much stuff. Where did it all come from? Why did I keep it? Do I need it with me at the new place.

Currently, the books and bathroom are packed and I have to pack up the kitchen (no, I don’t wanna) and my bedroom. Since my admission that I have an eating problem, I haven’t eaten any Oreos or ice cream (cue applause). I also have been very conscious of what I’m eating. My food diary is at work so I’ll be writing down what I eat starting on Monday.

Okay where am I going with this. Right.

Most of the clothes in my closet are from a time when I was a lot thinner. Like 50 pounds thinner. I’m not exactly sure about the number because when I was at my thinnest I never weighed myself. Well, I’ve been holding onto these clothes and moving them from one place to the next. For those of you who watch the Style network you know that Stacy London says this is not good. All it does is make you feel bad about yourself.

For the longest time, I didn’t believe this. I thought, “it’s motivation.” Well, clearly the motivation is not working. So, since this new place is a new start I’ve decided to finally let go of these clothes. For real this time. I have a few pieces (like 5) that I will be keeping–I know didn’t I just say I was going to rid my closet of these self-esteem killers? Letting go of clothes is like letting go of pieces of your identity. It’s tough to just get rid of it, still I must try to get rid of a good chunk of it.

I’m not the skinny 20 year old anymore. My 20 year old clothes are not cool anymore. It’s time to move on and by moving on I must eat less and exercise more. This way I can wear new clothes that are hot and age appropriate.

So, while I am packing up my unmarried self I’m also letting go of my single self. And right when the new Spring lines start coming off, I’ll be in the mall shopping my little heart out.

As I reflect back, I guess moving isn’t so bad. Every time you move, you get the change to make little changes to yourself and your space. This can always be a good thing.

On with the purge.

And here is why.

I eat way too much. I have a serious problem. There are some days when I know I’m not hungry, and I eat regardless. It’s awful. I take in too many calories. Most importantly, I don’t delay gratification.

If want a cookie, I eat it. If I want ice cream, I eat it. If I want a big bowl of pasta, I eat it. I don’t eat fast food or things that are unhealthy. I just eat too much of everything in general. I also eat to the point that I’m full. It’s a terrible habit, and I don’t really know why I do this. Sometimes I wonder if I’m filling some void.

I have been told and have noticed that I’m a terrible binger. I binge on everything. I binge eat, binge exercise, binge hang out with my friends. Binging is how I roll. It’s this character trait of  mine that is one of many reasons why I don’t do drugs. I totally couldn’t handle drugs. I’d be homeless and high. It would be bad.

As the wedding approaches and  I continue to make bad choices, I realize that I have this problem. I have tried not buying those things because I can’t have them in my presences. This seems unfair to FH. When we do finally merge he’ll want to have Oreos and cookies, snacks, and other bad-for-OMMFA-foods. I must learn to control myself.

Today when I was having a small ice cream after dinner I thought: this is not how a bride who wants to be thinner should eat.

I’ve always had this problem and I thought seeing a dietician would help. All the dietician has taught me is to love exercise. I mean really love it. This, of course, is not a bad thing, but I’m not skinnier and I still think I should cancel the photographer because I’m going to hate every picture. I just know it.

FH always asks: How bad do you want it?

Sometimes the desire to have ice cream seems to over power the desire to be thin. This is the problem. What I want to figure out is why? Why does the ice cream seem better at the moment versus being skinny in the future?

I am so vain so why do I eat the damn ice cream?

Well, this has been bothering me and I figured if I got it out of my head I might be able to conquer it.

Does anyone else have this problem out there? How do you deal?

So, as the principal got on the PA for the third time today gloating at having caught the culpret, I thought, “I too would like to pull the fire alarm.” I would then like to be a stowaway on one of the fire trucks that will inevitably arrive. They can take me away from this school where nothing gets done because there are too many interruptions and distractions.

Those red fire alarm pulls are so tempting. Seriously. Even the ink that comes pouring out of them, it’s all so sexy. Think about it. That kid, whoever he, sitting in jail or juvey, whichever, he’s going down as “the kid who pulled the fire alarm.”

Pulling the fire alarm in high school makes you a celebrity. He’ll return for his ten year reunion, there will be nostalgic jokes about the principal saying, “we caught the dummy.” Even I thought it was funny.

Still, I wonder if there is a deeper reason as to why this student pulled the fire alarm. It’s possible this child is simply a jackass, but it’s also possible they needed to create a distraction. Sometimes a distraction is necessary.

It makes me think about the story I’ve been working on. The story needs something with a pizzazz, like a fire alarm, arrest, and a joke.

Today’s been one of those days that I can’t figure it out.

We’re about halfway through the day, and I can’t tell which way it’s turning out. The M&Ms I’m about to enjoy are definitely making it better. Also, the 8 miles in my new Nikes is going to make it better. The one thing that’s been distracting me from being super teacher is the ueber amounts of excitement I have to be marrying FH in December. I seriously can’t contain myself. It’s the only thing I think about.

This semester feels like the longest game of catch up. I just can’t get it together. And to make things worse, today, for the first time ever, I lost student work. I have never done that. I was running scantrons, which I put into a folder, went back to my classroom, got to my classroom with all the copies I made while I was grading the scantrons, but no scantrons. What the hell?

I’m about to lose it. I have emptied my file cabinent, gone back to the room where I graded the scantrons. Nothing. I don’t think my students will really notice or care, it’s just so effing lame and unprofessional.

This morning I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Last night there was some wedding drama. FH talked me off the ledge last night, but when I woke up I felt terrible and guilty even though the reason all the drama went down was not my fault.

I have been debating if I want to write a post about this. I’m totally having a Virgina Woolf moment where I wish I was totally independent so I could write about whatever the hell I want. I don’t want to write about it only to upset FH.

FH, if you read this, will you let me know if you’re cool with my writing about what happened last night?

This post has absolutely no direction. I have been wicked focused in the mornings this past week, but by afternoon it’s gone. I want to stay at work until all my grading is done, but my homework is due in the class I’m taking, I’m making burgers tonight, and frankly I’m sick of being at this desk doing work.

While I was making copies and losing student work, a colleague came into the planning room and we were talking.

“I just can’t seem to get caught up.”
“Well, there is a teacher workday coming up, you can get caught up then.”

What are the chances the entire day is taken up by mother-effing meetings?

Sometimes I feel like I work at Dunder-Mifflin and I do everything but my job–which I have to remind myself is to teach.

The wedding is coming up and my parents are coming up for a visit next week. I can’t wait. I miss them so freakin’ much. FH is so lucky to have his family close by.

I have been writing fiction for the first time in months and with all the other stuff going on (wedding, half marathon training, hunting for a new place for FH and I to live, and oh yeah– a full time effing job) I’ve been a bit preoccupied.

Teaching high school has been a big fat reminder that I’m a tenure track professor at heart. I’ve been so busy with lesson plans, meetings, and more meetings that I hardly have time to get anything done. I’m also very involved; I am a co-sponsor of the Creative Writing Club. And by co-sponsor I mean that I run and organize it all and the three other teachers get credit, none of whom actually attend any of the meetings. Still, I don’t really care because I’m basically running a workshop, which is what I love about being an MFA. I’m also band staff six hours a week after school.

I have never in my whole existence been this busy. Every minute seems to be taken up with something. I took my first ever mental health day on Monday. It was lovely. I went to Bikram Yoga for the first time (almost passed out), got some wedding stuff done (yay, we have limos and hotel rooms to stay in before the wedding) and felt refreshed on Tuesday.

As of late, the wedding hasn’t been stressing me out, my seriously lacking pay check, however, has. I am still being paid as a substitute (a whopping 70 bucks a day folks), and I’m busting my ass. I really have to order my garters, shoes, and under garments for the wedding but can’t. I did pass the required state exam (very stoked–it cost two hundred bucks and apparently no one passes the first time!) so I’ll finally be making teacher pay in November–hopefully sooner than that.

My dietician made an observation in our last meeting. She said, “One Mean MFA, your life seems to be coming together. You’re job, your getting married, you’re in the best shape of your life….” Of course, today this all came to a crashing halt. The principal of my school announced to the faculty that he was taking some baller position at the district and that the job starts in November. I wanted to cry. He was one of the best leaders I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. He went out of his way to hire me. He could have easily hired a licensed teacher. Then when I didn’t have any technology in my room, he lent me his personal laptop for my classroom. He even came down to my classroom the day before my test to wish me good luck. The students love him, the staff loves him. He’s just one of the greats. I’m blaming my dietician for this one. Everything was going smoothly and then Buh-Lam.

Not that the principal leaving to better his career is this big awful thing, but I am being selfish and nervous that this will impact my job next year. While I don’t want to teach high school forever, there is something very nice about stability. I haven’t had it since like my sophomore year of high school, so yeah. I’ll take some stability right now. When spring rolls around, I won’t be so busy. I think I’m going to be inspired by Wide Lawns and her progress and bang out my memoir. She mentioned how she just had to get the book out of her system, and I get exactly what she means. It’s like it’s taking up space in my damn brain. Really lots of thoughts are.

I almost fainted.

I was almost afraid to say something to them because I was worried that if I did the behavior would stop. They’d just start talking high school nonsense. I did tell them that I was very pleased and reinforced the good behavior. This of course didn’t work because this was the same class that a week ago all needed hall passes to the library because they hadn’t printed out their papers (something they also did this Thursday). I wonder if I can take credit for this behavior, both the good and bad. I doubt it. The good behavior was a case of straight up self motivation. I love it. It was the first time since school started that I felt happy to be in a classroom. Of course, this all went out the window on Thursday when every single one of my classes were the classes from hell. Sometimes, I think there is something in the water.

Watching my students break into little groups to get their work done and then actually doing it made me wonder why older people (I guiltily admit I sometimes do this) talk so much smack about the younger generation. While my students are not as motivated and disciplined and academic as I’d like, on occasion they show me that the potential is there. The possibility that when the world is in their hands they won’t disappoint us.

I will admit that I did tell my students, when they didn’t come to my class prepared, that I feared for my future as they would be the generation that would responsible for taking care of mine. Seriously, how do you not come to English class without a pen and paper? and how do you not get your crap printed when you’ve been reminded for a week? and why do you complain when you’re given a writing assignment in a writing class? Seriously?

God-willing the students will continue to surprise me (in good ways). I know I’m not built to teach high school, but there are days when it’s not all bad.

Have your students ever surprised you?

I can’t believe ten years has passed since 9/11 happened. When I look at my students, I can’t imagine what they remember about it, because they were only five, six, or seven years old. I was a senior in high school. I was sitting in my AP English class. We had just finished watching something lame like Camelot. I don’t know why we were watching that crap, because I don’t remember reading it. When we finished watching it, for whatever reason our class decided to discuss who would take over for the President if he was killed or died and so on. We were laughing at how it was strange that the Secretary of Agriculture would take over if God-forbid the Presidential Line of Succession was to be needed. A student walked into our classroom and told the teacher what was happening. Because we were in a portable she couldn’t turn the news on, so we had to wait until our next class to see what was happening.

Looking back I realize how I didn’t understand what was happening. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. When I look at footage from 9/11, it blows my mind at how clueless I was. I had a teacher who had children who worked in the World Trade Center, and this same teacher had another child who was flying to New York that day. I remember seeing her running around school freaking out. Teachers aren’t supposed to freak out. I remember driving around with my best friend and flipping through radio channels and hearing Osama Bin Laden’s name for the first time.

9/11 is similar to Kennedy’s assassination in the way that you don’t forget where you were when it happened. You remember strange details about that day. I can tell you what seat in my English class I was sitting in, and where my friends were sitting too.

Two weeks after 9/11 my drama class took its annual field trip to NYC to see Broadway shows. A few parents didn’t want their children to go, but my mother (smartly) thought it was important that my sister and I go. Only a few kids dropped out of that trip–I think 2 or 3. My mother said if it was our time to go, it was our time to go.

I stood at Ground Zero while it was still smoking and it wasn’t until then that my seventeen year old brain began to process it all. I remember native New Yorkers yelling at us. Telling us it wasn’t a tourist site. To go away. To leave New York alone. I remember one of my teachers explaining to the New Yorker that it was important that we see the devastation so we could understand the evil and what happened.

While I still can’t understand the evil, I won’t forget the smoke and the ash that was still there after two weeks and beyond. The pain. The devastation.

Today, I couldn’t stop thinking about what that day was like for me (selfish), and trying to empathize as best I could with those children whose mother’s were pregnant with them as their father’s died, or those who survived and don’t know why. One of the most difficult things to face about 9/11 is the helplessness that the country experienced watching as the attack unfolded live before our eyes. So instead of feeling helpless, I’ve prayed that the victims, the family of the victims, and America one day find peace.

When school started I told my students my year’s goal was to not write one referral. Well that was shot straight to hell when the principal announced that every time a student is late they get a referral. Very nice. Thank you first block.

Overall, things are good at the new school. The faculty is made up of predominately young teachers. This means there are very few teachers with that negative attitude where they are constantly bitching about the current state of education. While there always teachers that bitch about students and how awful teenagers are, there aren’t as many at my school. Most of the teachers don’t complain, they are, instead, proactive. It’s a very nice, positive change from the adjunct office.

I am struggling to adjust to things like hall passes, bells, and the PA system. If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Teachers, please excuse this interruption,” I’d be rich. It’s weird being interrupted while teaching by the administration, the phone in my classroom ringing, and the bell. I don’t really like that aspect of it, especially since educators repeatedly hear “The time in the classroom is sacred.” I don’t see priests, pastors, and ministers being interrupted. Church is sacred. Right? I’m also not accustomed to students trying to talk over me and all the meetings and rules. Sometimes I forget they are teenagers and get really irratated during discussion when they  are talking over me and each other.

In this economy, however, I’m grateful to have something steady. I started working towards to my teaching license so that I can have high school teaching to fall back on. Still, high school is definitely not the end goal. It’s just not stimulating enough for me. I need higher level thinkers to talk to daily. High schoolers just aren’t there yet.

As you know, I feel very strongly that things happen for a reason. I’m pretty sure I’m teaching high school because I finally have some time to write. My life is slowly stabilizing, and it’s time to publish the crap out of  my writing.

I am busy as hell. I’m currently working as band staff, am a co-sponser of the creative writing club, and am training for a half marathon–not to mention, anything and all things wedding related. I like being busy. When I’m not busy, I don’t do anything. I’m totally unproductive. It’s awful. One of my best and favorite girlfriends from grad school and I have decided to begin exchanging writing to each other starting this month. I’m so grateful for this because 1) She is brilliant 2)I have someone to be accountable to 3) I have been itching for some feedback. Good feedback.

So far the energy for this school year feels right. I feel good.

It’s going to be a great year.